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TWO NOTES

In order to avoidout of the last chapter

(1) One sensible critic wrote asking me why, if God wanted sons instead of &039;toy soldiers,&039; He did not begettoy soldiers and then bringing them to life by such a difficult and painful process One part of the answer to this question is fairly easy: the other part is probably beyond all hu turned from a creature into a son would not have been difficult or painful if the huo They were able to do this because He gave theave them free will because a world of mere automata could never love and therefore never know infinite happiness The difficult part is this All Christians are agreed that there is, in the full and original sense, only one &039;Son of God&039; If we insist on asking &039;But could there have been many?&039; we find ourselves in very deep water Have the words &039;Could have been&039; any sense at all when applied to God? You can say that one particular finite thing &039;could have been&039; different from what it is, because it would have been different if so else would have been different if so had been different, and so on (The letters on this page would have been red if the printer had used red ink, and he would have used red ink if he had been instructed to, and so on) But when you are talking about God ie about the rock bottom, irreducible Fact on which all other facts depend-it is nonsensical to ask if It could have been otherwise It is what It is, and there is an end of the matter But quite apart from this, I find a difficulty about the very idea of the Father begetting many sons from all eternity In order to be many they would have to be somehow different from one another Two pennies have the sa different places and containing different atoms In other words, to think of the in space andin &039;Nature&039; or the created universe I can understand the distinction between the Father and the Son without bringing in space or otten The Father&039;s relation to the Son is not the same as the Son&039;s relation to the Father But if there were several sons they would all be related to one another and to the Father in the same way Hoould they differ from one another? One does not notice the difficulty at first, of course One thinks one can form the idea of several &039;sons&039; But when I think closely, I find that the idea see theether in soh I pretended to be thinking about so that exists before any universe wasin the picture of a universe and putting that so that and still try to think of the Father begetting many sons `before all worlds&039; I find I a The idea fades away into mere words (Was Nature-space and time and matter - created precisely in order to ettingtheuesswork)

(2) The idea that the whole huanism, like a tree - must not be confused with the idea that individual differences do not matter or that real people, Tom and Nobby and Kate, are sos like classes, races, and so forth Indeed the two ideas are opposites Things which are parts of a single organiss which are not, may be very alike Six pennies are quite separate and very alike; s are very different but they are only alive at all because they are parts of my body and share its common life Christianity thinks of huroup or iteans in a body different fro what no other could When you find yourself wanting to turn your children, or pupils, or even your neighbours, into people exactly like yourself, remember that God probably never ans, intended to do different things On the other hand when you are tempted not to bother about someone else&039;s troubles because they are &039;no business of yours,&039; reh he is different froet that he belongs to the saaniset that he is a different organ from you, if you want to suppress differences and make people all alike, you will become a Totalitarian But a Christian must not be either a Totalitarian or an Individualist

I feel a strong desire to tell you - and I expect you feel a strong desire to tell etting at us He always sends errors into the world in pairs-pairs of opposites And he always encourages us to spend a lot of ti which is the worse You see why, of course? He relies on your extra dislike of the one error to draw you gradually into the opposite one But do not let us be fooled We have to keep our eyes on the goal and go straight through between both errors We have no other concern than that with either of them